A Little Bit Mexican

It is always fun living in a predominately Mexican neighborhood. Yesterday, I took Anna outside to play with some of the little neighbor kids. When one of their mother's came outside for a moment I had a short conversation with her in Spanish. After which one of the children looked at me with a puzzled face and said, "You speak Spanish? You're not Mexican!" Then staring at me thoughtfully he continued, "Oh, you must me a little bit Mexican," then continued playing. I couldn't help but smile and chuckle to myself. I guess I am a little bit Mexican.

Our Big Helper

Our big helper:

Today at Grandma’s house, Anna was “helping Grandma do the dishes.” As grandma would put the silverware into the dishwasher Anna was “unloading” the silverware onto the floor.

Anna always wants to help me with the laundry. As I fold the clothes into piles, Anna will “sort” them and “arrange” them to make sure they are stacked just right.

Then she loves to help me put the folded clothes away. But she always ends up getting mixed up, and instead of putting the folded clothes in the dresser drawers, she ends up taking all of the clothes out of the drawer and unfolding them.

She makes sure that the toilet is always flushed and checks frequently that the door stop behind the door still has it’s spring.

She keeps the dust from settling on the mixing bowls in the bottom cupboard by pulling them out here and there and tossing them around.

She helps her parents to never be bored, being generous enough to provide us plenty of things to do all day long.

Anna very thoughtfully helps to “clean up” little things that happen to be lying on the floor by disposing them into her mouth.

She helps us not waste water by keeping our shower times quick and short.

She helps us wake up on time every morning, no later than 7:30am.

She reminds us of the simple joys of life an brings love into our hearts.

She provides plenty of laughs, smiles, hugs and kisses. We sure love our big helper.

Fosson Family Christmas

 

It had been planned for several years, that Christmas 2010 would be the Fosson Family Christmas. We would all come home and we did. We were all together for a whole week with a lot of fun. Some highlights of the week are as follows…

 

We played games and games and lots of games. One reason is that it was raining most of the week. We loved settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, and Banana Grams. We couldn’t get enough.

We all had a night to cook a favorite meal. Brigham and Elizabeth made Gnocchi, Shayla whipped up some zucchini casorole, Kent and I made Kent’s family’s traditional Christmas eve cheese fondue, Mom and Dad made the delicious Christmas dinner ham with all the other goodness, & Gabe and Jane Ann made a yummy minestrone soup with bran muffins. It was fun to try new meals.

These are the Bran muffins that were so good. One day we came home and had an “orange Party” with a bunch of grandma’s oranges.

We went on our traditional Christmas caroling rounds with dad playing his accordion. The day before we left we dug out the old almond tree, chopped up, and bundled the branches for my dad. When he got home he was so surprised that we were able to do all that in such a short amount of time. It was fun good hard work.

 

Anna quickly became the center of attention being the only grandchild.

She was held and loved to death by everybody.

 

Christmas eve we read the Christmas story, sang Christmas songs, drank wassail and ate chestnuts. It was a lovely evening. We all got a book from my mom called, “Mary, did you know” and listened to the song and played games afterword.

Christmas morning was great opening presents from everyone and finding out we were expecting a girl.

Gabe and Jane Ann opened received the adventure blanket we made them and Anna was so excited about ripping all the paper opening presents that all of a sudden she closed her eyes and just felt asleep in the middle of opening her quite book. Just zonked like that. It was so random and funny. Too much for a first Christmas.

 

I love this picture of Anna on her first Christmas coming into the living room and seeing her stocking.

      Some other highlights: We also went to the Redlands temple as a family and did sealings for a bunch of our Fosson ancestors. The sealer did great with so many Fosson names being used. Since it was raining most of the week we went to the church building a few times to play some heated games of basketball. When it stopped raining we all had fun at the park with Bocci ball. I accidently brushed my teeth with arthritis cream. We all hit up some stores for some last minute Chirstmas shopping and went to In-N-Out for a yummy Christmas eve lunch.